Civil hospital ICU to get ready in three months

The upgrading of Lord Mahavira Civil Hospital's Intensive Care Unit (ICU) will be completed within next three months. Civil hospital senior medical officer (SMO) Dr RK Karkara said this here on Wednesday.

Karkara said, “Recently, I attended a meeting at Chandigarh regarding upgrading of ICU, where the health directorate gave three months time to public works department to complete the work. They also asked us to give our requirements for the ICU. We have given our list, which includes five ventilators, eight beds, and eight monitors.”

The demand for upgraded ICU was raised during CM Parkash Singh Badal's visit to the hospital in February. The CM had accepted the demand and had announced Rs 2 crore for upgrading of the ICU. An amount of Rs 50 lakh was released on February 10, 2014 as first instalment for ICU.

A social worker, Ramesh Srivastav, said, “The instalment was released in February, but the progress of the work seems very slow, as till now no work has been done on the ICU at civil hospital. Moreover, the district civil hospital is in dire need of an upgraded ICU, as patients were being referred to other hospitals, like PGIMER, Chandigarh or Rajindra Hospital, Patiala in absence of proper facilities here.”

It is pertinent to mention that civil hospital does not even have proper ventilator facility. It has only two ventilators, out of which, one is used in the operation theatre, and other is not in working condition. The ICU established in the hospital does not have proper equipment, such as monitors and central oxygen supply. Moreover, there are no trained nurses and anaesthetists in the unit.

Dr Karkara said the work on ICU would be started soon as commencement of work needs a lot of clearance from the officials concerned.